Sandeberg Rising

It’s my birthday, it’s my birthday, go me, go me!

I’m up in Milton Keynes, with the Balls. Last night was enjoyable spent slaying a bottle of homemade sloe gin and today we go forth to snowboard and tonight we feast!

Presents so far include: Derren Brown’s ‘Tricks of the Mind’, ‘Blackadder’ DVD collection, ‘A Scanner Darkly’ and ‘The Black Dahlia’ DVDs, a bottle of sloe gin of my very own and the complete works of Mozart on CD. And in March I get to pick up my mum’s main present, a snowboard, including binding, bag and edge sharpening kit. So, phat lewt indeed!

And only four days until Conception!

TV

Well, I’ve still got a backlog of movies and programs to watch on the PVR, so I still haven’t watched the end of Season 1 of ‘ Torchwood‘. I’ve been mostly enjoying it, though it’s not really fantastic. But certainly watchable. What I have been enjoying is ‘ Threshold‘ on Sky Three since for some reason my reception improved. A team of geniuses attempts to unravel the mystery of an alien DNA/behaviour altering viral intelligence. Production values aren’t up there with some of the stuff coming out of the states, but it’s certainly interesting to watch. Getting Sky Three back also allowed me to watch an episode of ‘ Tru Calling‘. You’d think a pseudo-supernatural, time traveling investigation drama, starring Eliza “Faith in Buffy” Dushku whose character seems to only own low cut tops would appeal to me. But no, it’s fairly pants. I won’t bother watching any more.

Movies

I recently watched ‘ Over the Hedge‘ on DVD and found myself surprisingly enjoying it. A lot of recent animal themed animations like ‘ Madagascar‘ and such have been rather boring. But despite OtH’s standard “rogue finds redemption through the fellowship of his new-found friends” storyline (yes, I know it’s for kids) I actually found OtH laugh-out-loud funny in several places. And finally there was a role truly worthy of William Shatner’s overacting…

Graphic Novels

Not a lot recently, though I did re-read all of ‘Transmetropolitan’ a few weeks back, beginning to end. What an excellent series. But what I did buy recently was Frank “Sin City” Miller’s ‘300′, the tale of the Spartan’s holding back the massed army of the Persians. A totally excellent graphic novel that I would recommend to anyone, both in terms of art and story. The gallows humour doesn’t hurt it either. There is a movie due out in March and Chris “Cursed Empire” Louziou (sorry for the spelling) is running a playtest of a ‘300′ roleplaying game at Conception using the appropriately lethal ‘Cursed Empire’ rules.

“Real” Novels

I’m currently in the middle of two. I’m re-reading ‘The Sign of Four’ from my complete Sherlock Holmes book that I got for Christmas and also reading James Herbert’s ‘The Secret of Crickley Hall’. It’s a very old-fashioned ghost story so far. You know the drill… Haunted house, new residents, a terrible past… It’s all there. It’s enjoyable for all that, but I was hoping for more of an updated twist in the traditional haunted house scenario.

Music

Too much and too varied for me to individually list out, particularly now the Ipod speaker system is properly set up in the lounge.

But first, the weather…

Snow!
Then panic, chaos, delayed and canceled trains, people bundled up like Nanuk of the North (minus the yellow snow) and advice to “stay at home unless absolutely necessary”.
Closely followed by melting of said snow, and knock on effects on the transport connections caused by said few flakes.
Same as every year.

But anyway!

Last weekend was the birthday celebration of Ibis and there were gamers amundo! The festivities began, from my perspective, on Friday evening when Penny and I went to eat curry in Reading with those of Alison’s guests who had arrived a day early at the hotel. Oh, and Alison was there too, which was a relief. This did mean that Penny and Alison have finally managed to meet after all this time.
The curry was good, the company was good and it was nice to meet at least some of the people before actually engaging in freeform roleplay with them and their 25 or so friends.

What is freeform roleplay? Well, it’s like LARP but without the rubber swords. Hmm.. Not quite doing it justice. Tabletop roleplaying without the table. Or the dice. Or a great many rules. And with more GMs. And costumes. How about improvisational acting but with a prose character sheet and objectives? I think you get the idea.

The freeform in question was held at the excellently appropriate venue of Highfield Park and was excellently organised by Mystery in Mind. This being my very first freeform roleplay I was fairly nervous to begin with, especially as I didn’t know the vast majority of the guests. But all were friendly and I was eased in gently, playing the Lord Sandberg, a cunning manipulator of the political scene. Or at least he would have been if I hadn’t been about half a plotline behind everyone else. I’m afraid I didn’t do Lord Sandberg sufficient justice, but I certainly had fun trying to influence the leadership contest of the Conservative party. And thereby miss an entirely different plotline (or three) of occult goings on.

A lot of people had put a spectacular amount of effort into their costumes and really looked great. I wussed out and stuck with the tuxedo rather than hiring/buying a whole outfit.

The dinner and speeches after the gaming event were great, particularly Alison’s half hour speech in which she spoke about everyone present, which was a nice touch. And then some very nice people gave me a lift home at the end of the night.

Happy Birthday Ibis and thanks, I enjoyed celebrating with you and your friends.

And yes I did spell that right… On Sunday, post gaming, Penny and went to see Pursuit of Happyness. While at times perhaps a little too slow moving, even considering the subject matter, this tale based on a true story of a man who battles homelessness while struggling to become a stockbroker so he can provide for his family is a touching and uplifting story.

The film is entirely supported by Will Smith’s excellent acting. His portrayal as the lead character makes the whole thing believable. Of course, acting out his relationship with the character’s son wouldn’t have been too hard considering it was performed by his own son who manages to act out the role in quite an endearing way. Thanks the gods that Hollywood seems to be learning to avoid the annoying brat style kids in it’s movies somewhat these days.

All in all, worth watching for Will Smith’s performance but it’s not going to knock the socks off of fans of action thrillers.

Found on Warren Ellis‘ blog:

DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Would you call your work a hostile work environment?

HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Of course. It’s advertising. We’re the meme generals fighting the most publicized war ever fought.

Originally sourced from Mass Persuasion & Social Engineering.

I’ve thought long and hard about my ranking of the films I’ve seen in the cinema in 2006. Here’s the result, with capsule reviews:

6) Memoirs of Geisha
Way back in January I made the mistake of watching this. It was just about watchable, though somewhat irritating. Penny nearly walked out since she was comparing it to the book which she thought was excellent.

5) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
A good fun film that, while not as good as the first, was still enjoyable. It’s only due to the strength of the other films I saw in 2006 that this is second last. But at the end of the day, Jack Sparrow my be a comedy pirate, but it would have been nice if they’d have focussed less on the comedy and more on the pirate. I still intend to see the third in the cinema though.

4) Happy Feet
This was surprising as I mainly went to see this because Penny wanted to see it. It was however very good indeed, balancing comedy yet weighty concerns. Not as easily quotable as, say, Shrek and, with hindsight, it was often an animated ‘March of the Penguins’ with dancing but very enjoyable.

3) Pan’s Labyrinth
I wrestled with the ranking of this one and I know Penny will disgree; It was her favourite film of the year. It was beautiful, fantastical, awe-inspiring, terrible and touching. I’m really glad I got to see it on the big screen, but I still enjoyed the next two films more.

2) Casino Royale
It might have been a fatal error, but I re-read the book before watching the film. It ended up really enhancing my experience of the film because I could really see that it was in excellent hands. I truly excellent film, one of the great Bonds and an excellent reboot of a tired franchise. Bond Begins indeed.

And finally…

1) A Scanner Darkly
I really loved Linklater’s rotoscoped adaption of Phillip K. Dick’s tale of paranoia, drugs and loyalty. It’s definitely a film to lose yourself into, no matter how unpleasant that may feel, it doesn’t have a nice neat ending and is way too weird for ’shoving something on in the background’. Totally loved it.

Update: The Film Critics Movie of 2006 went to Pan’s Labyrinth, together with the prestigious Penny Award while the People’s Choice award for 2006 went to Pirates 2.

Well it’s been forever since the last blog post since it’s been so busy over the Christmas period. But also means there are plenty of things to blog about.

The first major event after the last blog post was the acquisition of our very first Christmas Tree. We meant to start small, maybe a little three footer. Maybe four. Five maximum. But we weren’t too disappointed when we ended up with a beautiful seven foot beast. A beast that Penny’s niece helped us decorate.

The Thursday before Christmas itself, our Christmas food arrived in the Tesco order. Sadly they had not been able to source, nor substitute, my Christmas venison. Needless to say I was terribly disappointed. However, when we went through the shopping bags we found… A three kilo free range organic turkey! It wasn’t a substitution and we weren’t charged for it, so free turkey for me!

Around about this time, we got an early Christmas present from our landlord who has extended our lease for another year at the same rent. We continue to have a home in Woking for the foreseeable future!

Next up was Penny’s departmental Christmas party with the emphasis on mental. It was themed ‘Gangsters, Molls, Pimps and Hos’ and Penny and I both went as gangsters rather than the more popular gangstas or pimps. There were plenty of hos on display though. All credit to Pimp o’ Claus Charlie who managed to bring the sexy back (to paraphrase Justin Timberlake) and secure himself a pay rise by thrusting his groin at his seated manager during a singing competition.

Christmas Eve saw us firstly in Canary Wharf on the ice rink for Penny’s first go at ice skating. And she did very well considering it was her first time. After that we were off to Andy and Mandy’s for the Christmas Eve bash, which was fun.

Christmas Day at last! And there were presents! I got a trip to go and do vertical sky diving in Milton Keynes and an open activity voucher which I intend to use to go on a tall ships day out of Portsmouth. Also four ultimate DVD Sean Connery Bond movies and the Casino Royale book. Secret Santa sent me a pirates treasure chest of nostalgia sweets. But fear not, no gobstopper has been able to shut me up yet!

On the 27th we took the Eurostar to go and see my parents. Unfortunately the weather was lousy, but we did manage to do some sightseeing in Brugge. We also managed to see the excellent Casino Royale while we were there and I was glad to have read the book on the way over first.

New Year’s Eve was spent at Kev & Lynsey’s and we were also joined by Tim and Karen. A pleasant evening and excellent food cooked by Lynsey as ever.

So there you have it. All the news that’s fit to blog. Now I’m back at work and my fitness regime begins tonight. No more pies for me…